Auntie Digi here and
welcome to my little cozy corner, settle down
with a cup of something nice and read on. I’m
here to lend a helping hand and a listening ear
to your problems in your digital software. Do
you loose your buttons, don’t know your .abrs
from your .patt, flatten when you mean to merge?
Well Auntie Digi has the answers for you. Drop
us a line on the boards with your little problem
and auntie and crew will answer it there and
pick the best each month to publish here under
Highway Help.
We start with’ Brushed off’
From NY who writes:
Dear Auntie Digi,
I have Photoshop Elements 4
and have got several kits with Photoshop brushes
in them. How do I use the brushes?
Brushed Off in NY
Well, Brushed Off in NY,
brushes are one of the most useful tools in
Photoshop, they can be used a textures, as
multiple patterns, frames and single ‘stamps’.
First, brushes that are made for Photoshop,
including elements come in .abr format.
To use them there are
several ways, but the easiest way is to make a
folder in your digital kits folder or My docs
folder. Name it Photoshop brushes. Put all your
.abr files in that folder.
When you open Photoshop go
to the left tool panel:
and look for the brush
icon, click and on the top toolbar will open
some choices for brushes, including size and
type. At the right hand side of the top of the
brush box is a tiny arrow with a fly out menu,
listed among other things is load brushes.
Click that and when presented with a navigation
box navigate to the folder where you made the
Photoshop brushes folder. Click on the brush you
want to use and then click open. You will then
have, loaded in the brush icon panel, the set of
brushes you chose. From there use whatever brush
you want.
If you want to make a brush yourself,
try this, make a new document about 200pixels by
200pixels keep a white or preferably transparent
background. Use your custom shape tool to draw a
shape in the box filled with color, dark colors
or black work best. Now go to edit at top of
toolbars, choose make brush preset
when
text box appears give the brush a name and then
go to brush list; go to the bottom of the list
and there will be your new brush. You can also
make a pattern this way, but I will tell you
about that another time.
Another way to make a
brush is to take a photo you may have scan an
interesting part, a texture or an object, maybe
a face, bring it into Photoshop, scale it down
if you have to, using your resizing tool. Make
it about 200x200px (or somewhere near that,
experiment a little) it doesn’t have to be
square either. Or select a small rectangular
portion of your photo. Then go to edit, make
brush preset, give it a name and voila your own
personal custom brush…hey hey now the
possibilities are endless. Well after all this
brush making you might want to save your new
brushes for another time. Go to the brush tool
icon select it, go to top toolbar where the
picture of the brush you want to use is and
click the fly out menu again.
In there is
a label preset manager click it will show a box
with all the brushes you have made, now select
by highlighting and then holding ctrl on each
new brush you want to make a set with (Like
choosing multiple files) then click save as set
or selection give it a name save it in your
Photoshop brushes folder.
Have fun!
